Strange Darling

Horror aficionados will find much to admire, but everything about this wild project defies generic expectations. It’s a thriller; it’s a cat-and-mouse game; it’s a truly messed-up love story.

Playing out in six, ingeniously scrambled chapters, this headlong thriller transforms a simple cat-and-mouse premise — and maybe even a toxic love story — into an impertinent rebuke to genre clichés and our own preprogrammed assumptions.

Although “Strange Darling” dutifully delivers white-knuckle tension and cinematic panache, Mollner’s savvy script also speaks to the unbalanced power dynamic a woman typically accepts when inviting the advances of an unfamiliar man.

It’s in uncompromising bad taste but made with lethal precision and discipline.

Not everything works — for example, there are multiple moments where characters are firing up cigs with Zippo lighters that seem painfully choreographed to look "cool" — but the film is so energetic and intense that it's hard to not go along for the ride.

Ultimately, Strange Darling left me with a little “Emperor’s New Clothing” feeling, with all the excitement coming not from the actual story but from the manner in which it is presented.

Fitzgerald gives a strong performance, especially considering the lack of depth her character is afforded, but her impact is drowned out by the film’s truly rancid attempt at upending the gendered inferences that Mollner has staged her character within.

Well written, the main protaganist's acting is superb and leaves you feeling betrayed.

Strange darling é um exercício de estilo: fatiaram o filme em seis partes, não lineares, cujo vai e vem das partes exigirá um poquinho mais de atenção, mas nada muito elaborado, dada a simplicidade e objetividade do roteiro. Também brinca com as expectativas sobre vilão e mocinha, de modo que irá pôr em dúvida o papel de cada um. O grande problema aqui é o quão didático e engessado o texto está, com frases tão diretas é como os personagens fossem 8 ou 80, tanto que o melhor diálogo do filme é quando estão no carro, num jogo que, para o espectador, não se define o papel de cad um de imediato. Assim, quando parte para suas resoluções, percebemos que é mais um filme genérico mesmo, perdendo a oportunidade de criar algo mais dúbio. Ainda assim, diverte.

'Stranger Darling' is a thriller that challenges the gender roles of this type of film and is presented out of sequence to create mystery around its protagonists. Willa Fitzgerald's extremely physical performance is the best part of the film. However, in the end, it feels like it relies too much on its narrative trick because when it's finally revealed it does not establish a convincing direction, not to mention that it's exposed as cheating.

Fantastic acting by all really, kudos to the performers. But the story is so bad. Wonderfully filmed quality, hated the story telling and the style in which the editors pieced it together. Overall experience was bad, the ending was terribly bad, want my time back. Skip it.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]